Space: Past and Present and Future
Jean Sexton muses:
Yesterday brought back a flood of memories for me. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Challenger accident. I was checking the pre-filed cards in the card catalog when a student told me the shuttle had crashed. I sharply told him to not joke about such things. He told me it was true. I stood there and cried for the people who died while pursuing a dream, for the lost opportunities, for the children who were waiting to see a teacher fly in the shuttle.
So many people remember Christa McAuliffe and for many she is a symbol of the desire to be an astronaut. Ronald McNair is also a person to remember. He grew up not far from where I ended up living. He faced discrimination -- at one time it took a police officer asking, "You know, why don't you just give the kid the books?" for him to be allowed to check books out of a library. Yet his brother recalls that when Ronald saw Star Trek, he saw the dream of people of all races working together as "science possibility," not "science fiction."
I've been fortunate to watch many science fiction ideas become science possibility. Not only do people work together regardless of race, but we have an international space station. We are watching private companies reach for the stars to make space travel available to people. We have robots roaming Mars and sending back pictures. We use the equivalent of communicators every day. So many inventions came from things we needed to reach space.
Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is dreaming of mounting laser turrets on fighters starting in 2014. Are the SFU fighters about to take a step in becoming real? Will we resume our travels to space by visiting asteroids? Will we see asteroid mining in our lifetime? Will we find "new lives and new civilizations" or will they find us? Only the future will tell and we'll reach it (barring time machine invention) by living through an exciting time.
What we at ADB, Inc. know is that we'll keep dreaming of new starships for you to fly. May you fly them successfully
Yesterday brought back a flood of memories for me. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Challenger accident. I was checking the pre-filed cards in the card catalog when a student told me the shuttle had crashed. I sharply told him to not joke about such things. He told me it was true. I stood there and cried for the people who died while pursuing a dream, for the lost opportunities, for the children who were waiting to see a teacher fly in the shuttle.
So many people remember Christa McAuliffe and for many she is a symbol of the desire to be an astronaut. Ronald McNair is also a person to remember. He grew up not far from where I ended up living. He faced discrimination -- at one time it took a police officer asking, "You know, why don't you just give the kid the books?" for him to be allowed to check books out of a library. Yet his brother recalls that when Ronald saw Star Trek, he saw the dream of people of all races working together as "science possibility," not "science fiction."
I've been fortunate to watch many science fiction ideas become science possibility. Not only do people work together regardless of race, but we have an international space station. We are watching private companies reach for the stars to make space travel available to people. We have robots roaming Mars and sending back pictures. We use the equivalent of communicators every day. So many inventions came from things we needed to reach space.
Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is dreaming of mounting laser turrets on fighters starting in 2014. Are the SFU fighters about to take a step in becoming real? Will we resume our travels to space by visiting asteroids? Will we see asteroid mining in our lifetime? Will we find "new lives and new civilizations" or will they find us? Only the future will tell and we'll reach it (barring time machine invention) by living through an exciting time.
What we at ADB, Inc. know is that we'll keep dreaming of new starships for you to fly. May you fly them successfully
posted by Federation Commander at 8:27 AM
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